Sources of creativity in consumer ideation : effects of providing information on company vision and market research

Abstract

We study the effects on creativity of providing information on (1) company vision, (2) reactive market research, and (3) proactive market research in consumer ideation of new services. We measure creativity by four variables (a) overall creativity, (b) number of ideas, (c) novelty, and (d) appropriateness. We collect data through a lab experiment conducted with students at the Norwegian School of Economics. We asked participants to generate as many ideas as possible on Near Field Communication Technologies, which is the case we used in the experiment. We treated participants with information on either company vision, reactive market research, or proactive market research. The control group received no additional information. Our findings suggest that (2) reactive market research have a positive effect on (c) novelty of ideas generated in consumer ideation. None of the other findings was statistically significant.